Our Story

It all began in 1995, as the MTV generation was coming of age, a small Friday night worship service called Highway began at the First Baptist Church of Los Altos. Highway’s founders, Dean Smith and John Riemenschnitter, were passionate about working with Generation X—a young, emerging, media-saturated generation who had supposedly left God behind. The ministry centered on four simple one-word values—truth, authenticity, community, and hope. Throughout its five year incubation, Highway sought a dialogue with culture through the ministry, and an exploration of the Gospel via film clips, popular music, art, and an authentic embrace of scripture in open, authentic community. Over time, it became clear that God was leading Highway to a unique role as a church entity. On Easter Sunday of 2000, Highway began meeting weekly at Palo Alto High School.

In 2005, Highway purchased Red Rock Coffee Shop in downtown Mountain View as a way to serve the local community, and establish a home for local art, music, and conversation. That same year, Highway merged with Community Bible Church in Mountain View, and the Mountain View Campus of Highway was born.

In 2015, after fifteen years at Palo Alto High School, Highway's Palo Alto campus merged with Palo Alto Church of Christ in the midtown neighborhood of Palo Alto to form Highway Palo Alto Community in Christ.

In early 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic beginning to cause catastrophe around the globe, Highway quickly shifted to digital tools as a way to care for one another and the wider community around us.

Additionally, the pandemic pushed Red Rock Coffee Shop to the brink of extinction… until a community-driven GoFundMe generated an outpouring of love in the form of donations and comments, and this inspired a purchase of Red Rock so that it could continue into the future!

The church  continued to use digital tools in various ways through the heavy days of the pandemic, and then in the summer of 2021 we began regathering as a church. We’re now centering the life of our community at our Mountain View campus and using our Palo Alto campus for partnerships and projects to bless the wider community around us.